258 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



The second of April, 1865, came, when the sixth corps went over the 

 enemy's works ; and Lee, with his army cut in two, yet lighting to the 

 last, retreated westward. Slieridan had gone across comitry to cut off 

 the retreat, while hard in the rear of the fugitives followed Meade. 

 He was too sick with malarial fever to sit on his horse ; but, with his 

 usual quiet determination, he insisted on keeping up with the troops. 

 That day week the remnant of the Army of Northern Virginia, 

 hemmed in between Meade and Sheridan, surrendered, and with it fell 

 the last hope of the rebellion. 



Scai'cely was he free from the rude trials of war, when he was called 

 to play a series of parts, which, by their novelty and their complex 

 nature, might well have overwhelmed a less able man. First came the 

 noted Fenian raid, which brought him in haste to the Canadian frontier. 

 There he found several thousand men, old soldiers the most of them, 

 organized and just making ready to invade a country with which we 

 were at peace. Meade caused their arms, which were coming by rail- 

 road, to be seized; and by this ready device completely paralyzed the 

 movement. 



Next he was despatched to be military governor of Georgia and the 

 adjacent States, than which a more trying position can scarcely be con- 

 ceived. Stigmatized as a satrap by the conquered people, disliked by 

 greedy politicians who called themselves Unionists, and supported by 

 an insufficient force of officers and men, Meade was compelled, not only 

 to fill the duties of his own profession, but also to perform the role of 

 a territorial governor, with dubious powers, and to act as a constitu- 

 tional lawyer in unravelling the ill-considered legislation by which Con- 

 gress sought to re-establish the South. In all these labors he acquitted 

 himself so admirably as to compel the^ respect even of his bitterest 

 opponents ; and it is not too much to say that no other military gover- 

 nor had such a measure of success. 



With these vexatious trials his labors ended, and happily he was 

 permitted to enjoy the last few years of his life in quiet, holding the 

 honorable but easy command of the department of the East. 



Meade was perhaps the first tactician in the United States Army; 

 that is to say, he had in a high degree the rare power of properly 

 moving large bodies of troops in face of the enemy. A natural 

 talent, developed by his long studies as an engineer, gave him a sort of 

 topographical instinct, so that in circumstances the most difficult — 

 at midnight and midst the woods of Spottsylvania, or in the cypress 

 swamps of the Chickahominy — he carried with him a mental order of 

 battle, and was never at a loss as to the position or direction of a coz-ps. 



